Involvement is an important aspect of leisure behaviour, and there has
been much work to develop this concept. Some work turned on trying to
establish the involvement of consumers in the products that they
acquired, where involvement was defined as a psychological state
featuring motivation arousal and interest (Wiley et al citing the
work of Rothschild, page 20). However, 'Empirical studies... suggested
that many consumer products typically generated only low involvement
scores; thus, the usefulness of the construct to consumer behaviour
research has been questioned' (20). [It seems to me that, on the
contrary, this is a very useful finding that serves to doubt much of
the work that suggests that people find their identities in the goods
that they buy].

Tracing involvement in leisure activities seems to be more valuable. It
goes beyond data about frequency of participation, for example, to try
to get at the meaning of a leisure activity for the participant. The
work has been developed particularly with sports, and some researchers
have elaborated whole scales and dimensions of involvement
[details on page 20 -- some of them look similar to the work on flow?].
Gender needs to be brought into these discussions, however.

The development of the notion of involvement has led to the idea of
three important facets 'attraction, self-expression, and
centrality' (20), which have been at the heart of considerable research
and have generated reliable results. Attraction 'should be
conceptualised as a combination of importance and pleasure...
pleasure... does not necessarily indicate high involvement unless the
enjoyable activity also is deemed to be important or meaningful to the
individual' (20)[ An interesting argument -- usually, 'pleasure' just
includes importance and meaning?]. Self-expression relates to symbolic
meaning 'the impression of self that individuals wish to convey
to others' (21), but again there seems to be two dimensions according
to whether self-expression is internal or directed more towards an
external audience. Centrality can be measured by the extent to which
participants organize their life around the activity, including whether
it 'occupies the main place in which interactions with friends
occur' [which raises possibilities of measuring it using the classic
sociogram techniques of mapping friendship choices?]. Another measure
turns on whether the activity is seen as having various life
benefits 'stress reduction or other significant health outcomes'
(21). The three facets may be connected together, but it is more common
to see them as making up an involvement profile.

Sport involvement is a good area to research if one wants to add
considerations of gender. In North America at least, sports are male
dominated and also gender stereotyped [divided into male and female
types]. The stereotypes clearly affect participation choices, with
males in particular mostly choosing 'conforming activities' that
are gender appropriate. Participants are not actually prevented from
choosing inappropriate sports, but gender stereotyping can be an
additional barrier.

The study set out to measure the involvement of male and female hockey
players and figure skaters in Ontario. These activities are heavily
gender stereotyped. It was thought
that male participants would report higher levels of involvement for
sports in general, and that involvement would be higher in
conforming activities. Additional variables were also
measured 'age, level or frequency of participation, and time or
number of years as a participant' (23). A final measure examined
attitudes towards sex equality. [Details of the scales used, all
of which seem pretty reliable and well researched, are provided and
seem very useful for anyone considering further research in this area.
For example attraction was measured by asking for reactions to
questions such as 'Participating in (these particular) sports is
one of the most pleasurable things I do'; self-expression by items such
as 'When I play sports... I can really be myself'; and centrality
buy items such as 'I find that my life is organised around
sports' (24). An established scale measures attitudes towards sexual
equality -- details on page 24]. The sample produced 205 records
altogether 'including data from 51 male hockey players, 76 female
hockey players, 24 male figure skaters, and 54 female figure skaters'
(24) .

The results proved to be rather unusual. The first step was to perform
internal correlations to test construct validity, and these were
satisfactory (24). The two initial thoughts [above] provided the
hypotheses for testing, and in each case results were compared between
genders and types of sport.

One problem emerged immediately in that there were important age
differences between the figure skaters and hockey players, and
different participation rates [which might be explained by the
characteristics of the sport, the availability of facilities, and the
stage reached in a player's career, as well as by gender stereotyping,
as the subsequent discussion suggests]. Attitudes towards sex equality
also proved important.

In general, 'there were no overall gender differences in
involvement level with sport in general' (25) [a real surprise
here]. If anything, female hockey players reported higher levels of
involvement and female figure skaters lower levels compared to other
groups. Hockey players tended to have higher centrality scores than
figure skaters irrespective of gender. There was also a significant
interaction effect involving gender and specific activity together,
which produced higher attraction scores for female hockey players, and
lower attraction scores for female figure skaters compared to the male
groups.

Looking at specific activities produced more surprises: 'with
females having higher overall involvement scores and considerably
higher attraction scores than males' in both cases (26). Females
also seemed to generate high self-expression scores, although this may
have been distorted by the particularly high levels reported by female
figure skaters. The activity also affected centrality, with hockey
players reporting high levels in general compared to figure skaters --
and there was a slight tendency for males to record particularly high
sores. Thus 'Overall, the results of this study provided only
very limited support for the initial hypotheses... it was the women
rather than the men who reported higher activity attraction schools...
the highest activity self-expression scores... and the highest overall
attraction for sports in general' (27).

However, there may be a gender effect in that attraction might be more
important for women, and centrality for men. Men may simply have a more
supportive social environment, including gender stereotyping, if they
want to play hockey [but is this permanent or temporary?]. The
unusual scores might indicate that women value pleasure and enjoyment
in sport rather than competition and achievement. It may also indicate
that participation requires particularly high levels of motivation to
overcome social stereotyping [hints of the negative
self-fulfilling prophecy. Other very interesting implications as well
-- (a) maybe societal constraints and stereotyping are not as effective
as we thought and can be overcome, (b) having a set of constraints
might actually help to motivate some women to enter sport]. There is
also the possibility of measurement problems, especially with the
self-expression scale -- there may need to be separate scales
'for personal identity versus social identity' (28).

It also seems likely that duration and frequency of the activity itself
affects attraction scores in particular. It may be difficult to get
into hockey, for example, and attraction levels may rise at first and
then level off [a 'career', affected by progress and
achievement as well as ageing?]. Figure skating seems easier to do on
your own too.

Finally, this data relates to regular and committed participants rather
than the general population, and other sports and leisure activities
may have different specific effects. Overall, the study may have
illuminated some important variables affecting leisure involvement,
including gender -- 'The immediate social context of people's
lives, as well as broader societal values and structures, may affect
not only leisure participation rates, but also the personal relevance
and meanings associated with leisure' [true, but disappointingly weak
compared with the original hypotheses?].